human geography chapter 5

© 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.

Chapter 5: CulturalGeographies

Chapter 5 Lecture

Katie PrattMacalester College



Key Concepts

Figure: Chapter 5 Opener Transgender men participants in the Miss Tiffany’s Universe beauty pageant.


• Culture– Shared set of meanings

– Always evolving

– Dynamic concept

– Globalization impacts culture

Culture as a Geographical Process

Figure 5.1 Star Trek fans.Figure 5.2 St Patrick’s Day in Japan.


• Cultural geography– Space, place, and landscape– Ongoing process– Two-way relationship between geography and culture

Culture as a Geographical Process (cont’d)

Figure 5.3 The Internet of Things.


• Folk and popular culture as artificial categories

Culture as a Geographical Process (cont’d)

Figure 5.4 Tamil hip-hop.

Apply your knowledge: Identify three aspects of your own culture and the ways that place and space have shaped it.


• Carl Sauer

• Cultural landscape

Building Cultural Complexes

Figure 5.5 Cultural landscape in Kenya.


• Critiques of Sauer’s cultural landscape

Building Cultural Complexes (cont'd)

Figure 5.6 Sauer's cultural landscape, summarized.

Apply your knowledge: Reflecting on Sauer’s words on how culture shapes landscape, think of one example where you have seen this take place.


UNESCO World Heritage Landscapes(Visualizing Geography)

Figure 5.1.1 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.


• European approaches to culture and place

• Historical geography• Genre de vie


Figure 5.7 Market gardens in Corsica.

Apply your knowledge: What are differences between American and European approaches to studying human interactions in the landscape?


• Cultural trait• Cultural complex• Cultural region


Figure 5.8 Tuareg men in Niger.

Figure 5.9 Chinese toddler using chopsticks. Figure 5.10 This South-Korean coming of age ceremony is a right of passage.

Apply your knowledge: How does looking at cultural complexes help us better understand the relationship between humans and places they live?


Shaping Place through Fact and Fiction

Figure 5.B “La Casa de Estudillo” house in Old Town San Diego. Figure 5.C Souvenirs from the nineteenth-

century novel Romona.

Apply your knowledge: Look around you both at home and in stores. What souvenirs do you find? What do they remind you of? What geographies—of landscapes, emotions, peoples, and travels—do these material objects recall for you or for their collectors?


• Broad similarities at the national, regional, or local level

Cultural Systems

Figure 5.11 Baseball regions, the United States.


• Kinship

• Tribe

Cultural Systems (cont’d)

Figure 5.12 Tribes of India.

Apply your knowledge: What is the differences between kinship and tribe? Identify two other places in the world where tribal relationships are key to the culture?


• Sex and gender– Not separate categories

– Multitude of sexes

– Gender as socially constructed

• Gender identity

Culture and Identity

Figure 5.13 Biological–Psychosocial Phenotype: Mutual influences of sex and gender. Figure 5.14 Masculinity and the

dandy in the nineteenth century.


• Feminism and gender• Intersectionality • Gender and class

Culture and Identity (cont’d)

Figure 5.15 Turkish women in Berlin, Germany are veiled, in contrast to the women in the crowd behind.

Apply your knowledge: What do you think of the UN statement that, “No society treats its women as well as its men”? Why do you think that is? How do you think that can change?


The Global Gender Gap

Figure 5.D The global gender gap.


• Ethnicity


Figure 5.16 Uyghur protest in the city of Urumqui.

Figure 5.17 Arab Street neighborhood in Singapore.

Apply your knowledge: Define all the different ways geographers analyze cultural identity: sex, gender, and ethnicity. Are there other categories that you think are critical in assessing cultural identity?


• Race

• Racialization• Whiteness, blackness,

and rap music– Blackophobia

– Blackophilia

– White privilege

– White supremacy


Figure 5.18 Students protesting against racist land rights legislation in Melbourne, Australia.

Apply your knowledge: What are other examples like “blackophobia” and “blackophilia” in your everyday life?


• Geographies of disability

• Children’s geographies• Geographies of childhood


Figure 5.19 Disability and space.

Figure 5.20 Free play and environmental exploration.

Apply your knowledge: Looking at geographies of race, disability, and children—what is the role of power in each of these areas of study?


Emergent Cultural Geographies

• Actor-network theory

• Non-representational theory– Affect

Figure 5.21 An actor-network. Figure 5.22 U.S. flag raised at Ground Zero, NYC.


Emergent Cultural Geographies (cont’d)

• Emotional geographies• Materialism

Figure 5.23 Genocide Museum, Rwanda.

Figure 5.24 Statue of Bussa, Barbados.

Apply your knowledge: What is the difference between “affect” and “emotion”? Can you think of an example when you have been in a particular space and experiences “affect”?


• Americanization

• Global Culture– World music

Globalization and Cultural Change

Figure 5.25 Top feature films, 2013. Figure 5.26 Bossa nova dancers.

Apply your knowledge: Why has the “culture of beauty”—which used to be very specific to different places in the world—become Westernized? What do you think might be lost as a result of a “global standard of beauty”? Can anything be gained?


Geographies of Beauty and Plastic Surgery

Figure 5.G Plastic surgery worldwide.

Figure 5.E Mauritanian norms of female beauty.

Apply your knowledge: How has the spread of capitalism “displaced” beauty norms and what are some of the effects of this displacement?


• Protecting cultural diversity: UN Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005)

Future Geographies

Figure 5.27 The cultural economy.